Our fearless leaders

Sam Chandler

Sam Chandler

Founder & CEO

Sam started his first company at 16, while still in high school, and his second at 21, while attending university. After founding Nitro with several friends in Melbourne in 2005, the once-tiny startup has gone on to become a Silicon Valley success story. Today, Sam leads a team of over 200 Nitronauts across the US, Australia, Europe and Asia, and every month, millions of people in nearly 200 countries use Nitro products.

Sam was the Ernst and Young Australian Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year for 2014. He's on a permanent leave of absence from Melbourne's RMIT University, where he studied business, after moving to San Francisco to establish Nitro's global headquarters. On the weekends, depending on the weather and the season, you’ll typically find him motorcycling, cycling or skiing.

Gina O’Reilly

Gina O’Reilly

COO

Part of the Nitro team as COO since 2008, Gina has global responsibility for the Business Operations, Marketing, and People functions, including Employee Experience and Talent. With over 15 years of software industry experience, Gina seeks to attract, retain, and cultivate the best talent at Nitro. In order to accomplish this goal, she is passionate about developing a creative, challenging, fun, diverse, and inspiring work environment that makes every Nitronaut feel that his or her contribution helps grow the business. Prior to Nitro, Gina oversaw global sales and marketing at activePDF, a leading provider of server-side PDF solutions and developer tools.

Fluent in French, Gina holds an MBA from the University of Phoenix as well as a BA International Marketing & Languages from Dublin City University, Ireland. In her spare time, Gina loves good food and wine, keeping fit, travel, and plenty of California sunshine.

Jeff Kreutz

Jeff Kreutz

Chief Product Officer

Jeff leads the development of Nitro’s Smart Document platform with global responsibility for Product Strategy, Engineering, Product Management, and User Experience. Jeff has more than 15 years of experience leading teams that build customer-centric, well-crafted, market-winning products. Before joining Nitro, Jeff led Product at several companies including RightNow Technologies, where he helped grow the company from $30M to over $225M before Oracle’s $1.5B acquisition in 2012. Jeff was previously Director of Product Management at Siebel Systems during its rapid growth to $1.3B before Oracle’s $5.8B acquisition in 2005.

Jeff holds an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, and a BA in Psychology (which he uses daily) from DePauw University. He lives north of San Francisco and enjoys travel, skiing, hiking and cooking with his wife, two daughters, and one-eyed beagle named Pippa.

Don Wight

Don Wight

Chief Revenue Officer

As Chief Revenue Officer, Don is globally responsible for Sales and Customer Success. He focuses on optimizing revenue generation across Nitro sales channels and the complete customer lifecycle—from demand generation to customer retention. Prior to joining Nitro, Don served as CRO at Demandbase, where he grew the company 70%+ YOY while overseeing all customer-facing employees and Channel/Business Development. Before Demandbase, Don was Senior Vice President of worldwide field operations at Jaspersoft, where he was responsible for growing the company’s network from zero customers to more than 1,000 enterprise customers.

Dedicated to philanthropy, Don sits on the Board of Directors at Rise Against Hunger, an international hunger relief non-profit that distributes food and life-changing aid to developing countries. Don and his family live in the East Bay, and on most weekends, you’ll find him ferrying one or more of his three children to swimming competitions or other sports.

Richard Wenzel

Richard Wenzel

VP, Strategic Operations

One of Nitro's founders, and now serving as VP of Strategic Operations, Rich is responsible for corporate operations, compliance, corporate governance, key treasury functions, and legal and shareholder affairs.

Prior to joining Nitro, Rich was an advisor at the Kerry Packer-controlled Challenger Group, in Melbourne. Rich returned to Melbourne from Milan, where he managed funding requirements for the Italian office of Bankers Trust (now part of Deutsche Bank AG), prior to which he was in London, where he worked as a trader in the treasury department.

Rich holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Gerry Treacy

Gerry Treacy

VP, EMEA Sales

Gerry is responsible for leading and accelerating Nitro’s revenue growth across the EMEA region. With years of experience at high-growth software companies, he has a proven track record of building sales teams from the ground up. Prior to Nitro, he led global revenue growth as VP of Sales at Severalnines. In his five-year tenure at MongoDB, Gerry—the first employee outside the U.S.—cultivated the EMEA business from scratch and ultimately managed corporate sales for both the EMEA and APAC regions. Gerry also helped scale MySQL in EMEA, leading the global corporate sales groups after the acquisition by Oracle.

Outside of work, Gerry enjoys spending time with his wife and two daughters, as well as playing football and golf (albeit badly).

Steve Bower

Steve Bower

VP, Customer Success & Solutions

Steve brings an incredible wealth of experience to Nitro as VP of Customer Success & Solutions. With 25 years of Engineering, Sales Engineering & Professional Services experience, Steve is an integral part of driving global revenue and product adoption across all regions at Nitro. Previously, as Nitro’s VP of Engineering, Steve oversaw the global expansion of the Engineering team and the launch of many Nitro Pro & Nitro Cloud product releases.

Prior to joining Nitro, Steve directed organizations for both large and small companies including Autodesk, where he drove Enterprise Application development in the office of the CIO.

Having lived and worked in Boston, San Francisco, Paris, Milan, and Rome, Steve brings a global perspective and experience driving international teams and businesses. Steve prides himself on building world-class teams that deliver and delight customers across the world.

Steve enjoys hiking, swimming and walking on beaches with his wife in Marin, where they live. He also enjoys keeping up with cultural happenings at San Francisco's museums & galleries.

Erica Johnson

Erica Johnson

VP, People

As Vice President of People at Nitro, Erica supports and advances the authentic culture that is Nitro. With over 15 years of experience in HR and Operations, she oversees employer branding and every aspect of the employee experience—from talent recruitment and onboarding to employee engagement and development. Guided by the mission to empower Nitronauts to do their best work, Erica helps uphold Nitro’s core values, ensuring an equal balance between the needs of the company and the employee.

In her spare time, you’ll find Erica dining her way through the Bay Area’s top epicurean destinations, wine tasting in Napa, or indulging in the latest Real Housewives drama.

Eric Salas

Eric Salas

Head of Marketing

As Head of Marketing, Eric oversees Nitro’s global marketing function—from demand generation, eCommerce, creative, and marketing operations to product, brand, digital, and enterprise marketing. With over two decades of B2B and B2C experience in client and agency leadership roles, Eric has worked with startups and global enterprises alike, including AAA, Visa, Symantec, Dole, and Nestle. Prior to Nitro, Eric was the Senior Director, Global Product Marketing at LiveOps, where he successfully launched a wide variety of new cloud products and customer-service applications.

An avid lover of travel and wine, Eric spends much of his free time in Sonoma, where he enjoys sipping pinot noir and playing with his two French bulldogs, Timo and Juno.

Board of Directors

Sam Chandler

Executive Director

Sam started his first company at 16, while still in high school, and his second at 21, while attending university. After founding Nitro with several friends in Melbourne in 2005, the once-tiny startup has gone on to become a Silicon Valley success story. Today, Sam leads a team of over 200 Nitronauts across the US, Australia, Europe and Asia, and every month, millions of people in nearly 200 countries use Nitro products.

Sam was the Ernst and Young Australian Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year for 2014. He's on a permanent leave of absence from Melbourne's RMIT University, where he studied business, after moving to San Francisco to establish Nitro's global headquarters. On the weekends, depending on the weather and the season, you’ll typically find him motorcycling, cycling or skiing.

Kurt Johnson

Non-Executive Director

Kurt has more than 24 years of management experience, including public and private company leadership, initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, strategic investments, recapitalizations and venture stage investing.

Previously, Kurt was president and CEO of Fastclick (NASDAQ: FSTC). Under his leadership, the company tripled revenue to $85 million, completed a $75 million private placement offering and a $78 million IPO. Kurt then orchestrated the sale of Fastclick to ValueClick in September 2005, achieving a $285 million valuation. Before joining Fastclick, Kurt was CFO of ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK) and was instrumental in the company's growth from an early-stage enterprise to a $500 million international media technology company. Before ValueClick, Kurt was an investment banker with Olympic Capital Partners in Seattle.

Andrew Barlow

Non-Executive Director

Andrew was a founder of Hitwise, one of Australia's most successful global technology companies. Hitwise was one of the world's first "big data" companies, monitoring tens of millions of Internet users on a daily basis, and providing real-time competitive intelligence to Fortune 1000 customers globally. Hitwise was acquired by FTSE 100 company Experian (LSE:EXPN) in 2007 for US$245m.

Andrew is currently the Founder and Chairman of Adslot Ltd. Adslot provides automated ad sales solutions to online publishers, allowing them to sell premium ad inventory direct to agencies and advertisers. Adslot is publicly-listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX:ADJ), and has offices in Melbourne, Sydney, London, San Francisco, New York, Hamburg, Auckland and Shanghai.

Andrew was an early-stage investor in Nitro via his private investment company, Venturian, and has acted as an advisor and non-executive director to Nitro since January 2007. He loves the company, the people, and the team events. When he's not thinking about Adslot and Nitro, Andrew loves travelling with his wife and children, enjoying great food and wine with friends, and seeing how fast he can go in a race car (but not all at the same time).

Richard Wenzel

Executive Director

One of Nitro's founders, and now serving as VP of Strategic Operations, Rich is responsible for corporate operations, compliance, corporate governance, key treasury functions, and legal and shareholder affairs.

Prior to joining Nitro, Rich was an advisor at the Kerry Packer-controlled Challenger Group, in Melbourne. Rich returned to Melbourne from Milan, where he managed funding requirements for the Italian office of Bankers Trust (now part of Deutsche Bank AG), prior to which he was in London, where he worked as a trader in the treasury department.

Rich holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Anthony Glenning

Non-Executive Director

John Dyson is one of the founders of Starfish Ventures and has overseen and managed investments in a range of technologies and industries. John has achieved numerous exits for his portfolio companies including a NASDAQ listing, ASX listings and trade sales to local and overseas companies.

John is a passionate alpine skier and is a former Chairman of Mount Buller and Mount Stirling Alpine Resort Management Board, which oversees the management of Victoria’s largest alpine resort. John was also the former Chair of Swinburne Ventures Pty Ltd (the entity responsible for the commercialisation of technology for Swinburne University of Technology). John is a co-trustee of the Dyson Bequest, a $16M Charitable Foundation that provides grants to a range of social welfare, education and environmental causes.

John holds a Bachelor of Science from Monash University, a Graduate Diploma in Finance and Investment from Securities Institute of Australia, Masters of Business Administration from RMIT University and is a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. John attended the Stanford University Executive Program in 2010.

John has been an active participant in the Australian venture capital industry. From 1997 to 2002, John was a Director of the Australian Venture Capital Association Limited, including Deputy Chairman in 1998 and Chairman in 1999. John is currently a Director of Aktana, Atmail, Audinate, DesignCrowd, Echoview (Myriax) and Nitro Software.

Michael Brown

Non-Executive Director

Since joining Battery Ventures in 1998, Michael has made, or managed, multiple investments spanning the financial-services, enterprise-software and technology-enabled business-services markets. From 1996 to 1998, Michael was a member of the high-technology group at Goldman, Sachs & Co., where he worked on debt and equity financings as well as mergers and acquisitions. Previously, he was a financial analyst within Goldman’s financial-institutions group. There he focused on mergers and acquisitions within asset management, insurance, specialty finance and retail/mortgage banking.

Michael graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University with a dual BS in finance and international business.

Frankie

Chaka and Rufus

Juno

Gronk

Doogan

Ollie

Huskie

Customer Success

A day in the life

Whether we’re cheering at a Giants game, creating the next big thing in document productivity, practicing our yoga flow, or apple picking for charity, we have plenty of reasons to love coming to work every day.